As businesses look to reduce their communications overheads, many may turn towards IP telephony and IP telephone systems as a way of making savings.

A converged voice and data network eliminates the costs of supporting and maintaining separate networks as well as offering significant savings on call costs by virtue of sending voice over IP (VoIP) over existing wide area networks (WANs).

Where IP telephony comes into its own is when a business has multiple sites and is being charged for internal calls made between these sites. VoIP calls can be carried across the existing WAN that links these sites for data purposes and are therefore free of charge.

But such a converged network has other uses, with the deployment of unified communications being the forerunner.

Unified communications gives access to messages of all types (including email, voicemail and faxes) in a single inbox. It also provides a platform for voice and video conferencing, document sharing and intelligent rich presence that allows staff to instantly see the availability of colleagues.

This real-time communications technology promotes increased productivity among staff and can help reduce administrative overheads.

So, we believe the affirmative answer to the IP question is probably three-fold:

1. Yes, if you are a multi-site business

2. Yes, if you wish to make use of labour-saving collaborative tools

3. Yes, if both scenarios are relevant to your business

swcomms has 30+ years of experience in the voice and data industry. We are experts in the deployment of IP telephone systems and the data networks required to support them. Please do not hesitate to call us for advice.

Posted by

Caroline Moore on 12/08/2013

Former newspaper journalist, Caroline joined the company in 2008 with no previous knowledge of the industry.

She set about stripping back all the jargon to produce plain English marketing collateral to support the sales teams. Now slightly more well-versed in the dark arts of voice, connectivity and data services, Caroline writes blogs, case studies, data sheets and social media updates to engage with potential and existing customers.

This industry is far cry from her previous working life when she worked as communications manager for Exeter Chiefs and Northampton Saints.